Music director Christian Kluxen and the Victoria Symphony bring 19th-century German composer Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 to life this Sunday at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium.
Schumann’s C major symphony, composed in 1847, is described by the VS as “overpowering in its wealth of expression” and a “balancing of light and dark” that reveals the artistic relationship between Schumann and Beethoven.
Also on the program for the Feb. 6 concert, the third in the series Being Robert Schumann, is a new work by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, entitled Tableau.
Smith, who received her masters degree in music from UVic, has been a featured artist at the Edinburgh Festival and had an orchestral premiere at the BBC Proms. Tableau, written as a companion piece for Schumann’s No. 2 symphony, “sets an atmosphere of mystery and quiet adventure,” a release from the symphony stated.
“Melodic fragments emerge and are subsumed by undulating figures. Schumann’s Symphony No. 2’s slow movement contains layers that display his study of Bach’s counterpoint; Smith’s ‘Tableau’ also layers music, but unlike in Schumann, layers create a subtle, watercolour wash.”
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The new work is essential to director Kluxen’s vision for the concerts. Tableau is the first premiere in a series of new pieces written with the four symphonies of Robert Schumann in mind.
Tickets for the Sunday, Feb. 6 concert at 2:30 p.m. are on sale now and can be purchased by calling 250-721-8480 or visiting www.victoriasymphony.ca.
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